Violin prodigy, 14, from Palm Beach Gardens, to perform on NPR show

A few months shy of his 15th birthday, an aspiring Palm Beach County violinist will be heard by a national audience.

Matthew Hakkarainen entered his first violin competition at 5 years old, playing "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" on a stage in Jacksonville and taking home a blue ribbon.

At 13, he flew to Germany for his first international competition, and made it to the final round.

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Now, a few months shy of his 15th birthday, the Palm Beach County violinist is checking off another milestone: Playing for a national audience.

Matthew will be featured this month on "From the Top," an NPR program that showcases young musicians selected through a competitive audition process. The nationally syndicated show is carried by 220 stations, including three in South Florida that are set to air it next Sunday.

"It's not every day that you can say that everyone across the country is going to be hearing you, and it's such a privilege that I get to have that opportunity," Matthew said. "I'm just really looking forward to hearing it."

The violin has become a bigger and bigger part of life for the Dreyfoos School of the Arts freshman, who calls classical music his "thing," excels at math and likes playing chess, though he says with a laugh that sometimes he "can't find that many people who like to do it."

He started taking lessons at 3 years old. His mom, who began playing the violin when she was 9 but chose a career in medicine, signed him up (his 7-year-old sister plays, too.)

At first reluctant — "My mom says I used to storm off a lot" — Matthew went from playing violin for his mom's benefit to playing it for himself. At about 8 years old, "he really took off," his mom, Gloria, said.

Today Matthew practices as much as five hours a day and leaves his Palm Beach Gardens home for Indiana about once a month to take lessons with a professor at Indiana University.

Making it into the competition in Germany, Matthew said, was "like a dream come true."

"I can tell you that the day I found out I was jumping all over the place," he said.

Wendell Simmons, director of orchestras at Dreyfoos, who has taught a number of students who went on to become successful musicians, called Matthew "exceptional."

"Some people might come in really musical but not technically equipped to really get out what they want to say, and other people come in really technically equipped and they can play anything but they don't really say as much," he said. "He's a combination of both. And he says a lot when he plays. It's a beautiful thing to see."

It was Simmons who encouraged Matthew to send an audition tape to From the Top. The program, which Matthew had applied to once before, accepts about 125 kids each year from a pool of 800.

From the Top has been on the air for about 15 years and has featured about 3,000 musicians, said Robin Allen LaPlante, marketing and communications manager for the program's national tour. Hosted by pianist Christopher O'Riley, the program also includes interviews with the musicians aimed at revealing their interests and personalities.

The program's producers seek out "regular, everyday kids that also happen to be amazing young musicians," LaPlante said. The young musicians it highlights are among the country's best.

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"Our founders kind of figured out that kids were winning competitions, classical music competitions, across the country and then going back to school and not really telling anybody about it," LaPlante said. "They decided it was time to celebrate young musicians the way we celebrate young athletes."

The show is the most popular weekly one-hour classical music program on public radio. It has about 500,000 devoted listeners and each year reaches a total audience of about a million, through YouTube videos, live recordings and outreach efforts.

Years ago, Matthew and his mom used to regularly tune into it on their way to violin lessons. When he found out he'd been selected to play on it, that was one of his first thoughts.

"It took a while to process that I was going to be playing on the same radio show I'd been listening to when I was growing up," Matthew said. "It was an incredible feeling."

The show taped on April 29 at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami, in an auditorium packed with students. Matthew, the youngest of the four featured musicians, was more nervous about the interview portion than the performance.

He played a song called "Praeludium and Allegro," with O'Riley accompanying him on the piano. It was "outstanding," LaPlante said.

"They gave him like a double standing ovation," Gloria Hakkarainen said. "He didn't know what to do with that."

One day, he hopes to go to a music conservancy and play professionally. He said being a soloist "would be incredible."

"I enjoy to play a lot and I would just love to be able to spread that around to other people as much as I can," Matthew said.

For now, though, he's staying busy practicing, competing, composing his own music (one piece, a movement about three animals — the Hopping Hare, Galloping Mare and Growling Bear — won first in a state competition) and playing at events with three classmates. They call their group the "Millennium Quartet" because all except one of its members were born after the millennium.

Matthew says that student is "an honorary millennial." They started the quartet in middle school. Every once in a while, people do get worried about their ages.

"It usually works out fine though," Matthew said, "when I start playing."